I attended a lecture entitled, “Women and Sharia,” held at David Lipscomb University (a Church of Christ college) on August 23 in order to observe the latest manifestation of mass psycho-social delusion. After all, it is obvious to even the most reality averse that women are not considered the equal of men in Islamic countries all over the world. The doctrine of male superiority becomes obvious from the most cursory reading of the Islamic texts and yet there are apparently quite a number of people (over 300 in attendance) who are willing to set reality aside and suspend critical thought in order to believe a comfortable lie; men and women are “absolutely equal under Islam” and that “Muslim women actually enjoy more rights than American women.”

This was the thrust of Maha ElGenaidi’s talk delivered in a soft voice tempered by a slight New York accent. She had come with her parents from Egypt to the United States at the age of seven and now lives in “the Bay area” which must be uttered with proper reverence given its status as the progressive capital of the known universe, second only perhaps to Boulder, Colorado. Mrs. ElGenaidi is the CEO of something called the Islamic Networks Group (to which she devotes a grueling 6 to 8 hours a week) and speaks under the aegis of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Ingrid Mattson, the current President of ISNA, provided the talking points for ElGenaidi’s power-point presentation, or so she said.

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The first thing we were handed was a paper put out by the Center for American Progress entitled “Understanding Sharia Law: Conservatives’ Skewed Interpretation Needs Debunking.” This was an unapologetic attack on the Center for Security Policy’s Team B Report, “Sharia: The Threat to America.” Authors Wajahat Ali and Matthew Duss argue that Sharia is fluid, ever-changing and ultimately no more a threat to anybody anywhere than the old Testament’s more unsavory passages. Of course, to believe this, one has to ignore all the resurgent, expansionist Islamic movements active all over the world today on every continent, or alternately, that there are suicide bombers blowing people up on a weekly basis while yelling, “Jesus Saves!” Jews used to stone adulteresses too, you know, and what about those Crusades?

Mrs. ElGenaidi gave the strong impression that Islam is in the process of a great renaissance of change, that female imam’s are just round the corner and in fact, there is a mosque specifically for homosexuals in her hometown. Along with many other dubious assertions, she actually said that homosexuality is an entirely private affair under Islam and Sharia law has nothing to say on the matter.

Despite ongoing efforts to minimize domestic violence, promote gender equality and empower women, new study in Zanzibar indicates that many women are still beaten and bullied by men including Muslim clerics!

In its report, the Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA) – Zanzibar revealed that although men beat women, but the number of cases being reported to the police remain few, mainly because most women opt to tolerate violence in order to keep her family together. “Women have testified to have been bullied and beaten by men, but they think it is improper to report the case.

Some get hurt severely in the domestic violence, but treat themselves silently to save the husband or partner,” the report says. The report says that women beating in Zanzibar are linked to love jealousy, disputes over wealth and family care, alcohol, neglect in marriage, and men superiority in the family. The report further says that most of the women asked during the survey held in ten districts of Zanzibar, agreed that beating and bullying is common but done under secrecy.
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Some Zanzibari Islamic scholars like Sheikh Fadhil Soraga from the Mufti Office, and Dr Issa Ziddy – lecturer at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) says beating of women is not allowed in Islam and that a man should avoid bullying and beating his wife. A Researcher, Silas Maranatha, in his publication ‘WIFE BEATING IN ISLAM’, points out that Wife/Women beating is one of the more controversial issues in Islam with the Quran’s authorization for husbands to beat disobedient wives.

Many people have criticized Islam because of this harsh sanction and many Muslims have written articles seeking to defend it. He says that Prophet Muhammad’s viewpoint of women was that they “lack self-control” and thus for their own good, and societies’ good, they must be subordinate to and managed by their husbands. Wives must obey. In an Islamic marriage when a man gives his bride a dowry he is accredited the right to manage his wife. By accepting his dowry a woman is giving her husband the right to her regulation.

Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great.

A Christian minor girl from Sahiwal, a city in Punjab, Pakistan, was recently murdered after being “gang raped” by a group of five Muslim men.[ . . . ]Her father was visiting a local hospital where his wife was having her appendix removed and during that time, the group were told that the minor girl had gone into a local field to relieve herself and was then viciously set upon by a gang of men and gang raped and murdered.

Two Children in Pakistan Abducted, Assaulted, Raped

A 15-year-old girl and five-year-old boy were kidnapped and raped in two separate incidents in the province. Rimsha*, was picked up by two men on motorcycles and taken to an unknown location. She was kept in a room and subjected to rape for five consecutive days . . .

In another incident, a five-year-old boy was sexually assaulted after being taken from his father at gun point.

Rape victim Alicia Gali is still traumatised three years after she was raped and jailed for adultery in United Arab Emirates.

Ms Gali, who worked as a beauty salon manager at a UAE resort in 2008, was jailed for adultery, after complaining to police that she had been drugged and raped by co-workers in resort staff quarters. The last thing she remembered, before waking the next morning with painful injuries, was a staff member putting ice in her drink.

On October 28, 2011, the jihadi forum Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad published a fatwa by Sheikh Abu Humam Al-Athari, a member of its shari’a council, in which he unequivocally permits mujahideen to capture the infidels’ women and have sexual intercourse with them, even those who are married, on the claim that their marriage bonds to infidels are dissolved as soon as they are taken captive.

This article is revolutionary. Saudi Dr. Khalid Alnowaiser. is a newspaper columnist and a Saudi attorney who has written about the oppression of Saudi women and what it will take to remedy it.
The good doctor is living in an alternative reality if he thinks that the men of Saudi Arabia, keepers of the one true Islamic faith and proud citizens of the land of the Kaaba, are going to change the unchangeable Koran, ignore Sharia law and turn away from the example of Mohammed. I do wish him the best of luck and hope he has not endangered his life by airing his ideas in public.

I was hesitant to write again about the subject of Saudi women, but I concluded, after much consideration, the entire topic is more serious than I originally anticipated. My reasons are simply as follows:

1. Women are our mothers, daughters, wives, sisters and others and they affect if not influence virtually all aspects of our lives.

2. Women comprise more than half of our country’s population, and quite frankly, no real social development can be accomplished without them.

3. Islam is a great religion but some of us are sending the wrong message about this amazing religion by clinging to outmoded attitudes and repressing the basic civil rights of women.

4. Saudi Arabia has a moral responsibility to respect and protect human rights for all of its citizens.

5. We are indeed fortunate to have a monarch in Saudi Arabia who has been trying hard to liberalize women from a negative cultural legacy, and all of us need to support him in his efforts to grant women greater civil rights.

Unfortunately, in Saudi Arabia and around the world, there are always men who want to control women’s rights in the name of religion or otherwise. This is clearly not something that arises out of a vacuum or by coincidence, but is a deliberate and well-planned strategy by certain groups to dominate society; and the most effective way to achieve this objective is to maintain control over all aspects of a woman’s life.

But why is this so? Men in positions of power and authority have a huge stake in ensuring that women remain powerless so they can preserve their power and influence.

The Taliban misogynist mentality is a reflection of the degree of adherence to Sharia law, based on the doctrine of Islam as found in the Koran and the Sunna, the example of Mohammed.

The Taliban misogynist mentality is alive and well, and in fact it is thriving and mushrooming globally.

A group of village elders, all men, conducted a council meeting to enact important social policies. The decrees they passed include: Women under age 40 are banned from going out shopping. Girls must wear head scarves in public. Girls are not allowed to use cellphones. Marriages that are not based on parental arrangements are banned. Women under 40 are banned from going out after sunset.

This might seem like Afghanistan under Taliban rule in the late 1990s.

However, this is, in fact, India in 2012. [ . . . ] Rape and gang rape of career women in Delhi have reached near epidemic proportions. Shockingly, the victims are usually blamed for the rape because of what they were wearing and the time of night they ventured out, many to head home from jobs or universities at odd hours. [ . . . ] The Taliban misogynist mentality is alive and well, and in fact it is thriving and mushrooming globally. In northern Mali, Islamic militants have taken over, and the first set of fatwas has targeted women: They must cover up, and they must not venture outside, even to go to the market. [ . . . ] Misogyny, of course, is as old as time itself. However, we live in modern times when universal norms for human rights and gender equality are to be respected, and violations are not to be tolerated. The global trends we are seeing in enacting new local laws and fatwas, and moral policing, that perpetuate misogynist attitudes and policies as well as violence against girls and women only point to one thing: We are experiencing a second, broader wave of “talibanization” of societies in different parts of the world, something I refer to as “Taliban 2.0.”

I truly wish these women activists the best but Fardous Azadi can work her fingers to the bone, and it will not change the fact that child marriages from the age of nine years will always be tolerated in Islam. Why? Because Mohammed married Aisha at six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. Child marriages (as long as the girl has had her first menses) are Sunna and legal under sharia law.

A new report from Iran has revealed a striking rise in the number of child brides under the age of 10-years-old.

The Union for the Protection of Children’s Rights said that in 2010, at least 713 marriages of girls under 10-years-old were registered in the country, more than twice as many as registered in the three years before.

Farshid Yezdani of the Union was cited by TREND news agency as reporting at least 75 child marriages were registered in the capital, Tehran, last year.

The report also released numbers for 2010, which showed some 342,000 marriage contracts among adolescents under 18-years-old were registered, of which 42,000 involved girls between the age of 10 to 14.

Women’s rights activists across the world have called on the Iranian government to end the marriages of girls under 18-years-old, arguing that the girls are not able to decide their future at that time and that marriage should be a partnership agreed upon by both the husband and the wife.

“It is a worrying trend to see and something that we are all working hard to end,” said Iranian women’s rights activist Fardous Azadi, who told Bikyamasr.com that she has been working closely with a number of European organizations in an effort to educate people in Iran.

“The best way to end this kind of practice is to give information on how to better one’s life without infringing on a child’s ability to have a childhood,” she said. “And we are being successful, we believe, in changing a lot of the perceptions toward this practice.”

Islam plays a huge role in the practice of FGM. It is not a requirement as stated in the last article but it is permissible; it is not forbidden by the Sunna and sharia law, and some Islamic clerics even say FGM is an honor.

In Sweden:

A man and a woman have been remanded into custody by Attunda district court in Sollentuna on suspicion of having subjected their daughter to female genital mutilation (FGM).

The couple who are both in their 30s are suspected of having allowed the procedure to be carried out on their 3-year-old sometime between January and April 2012 in either Sweden or Gambia.

Female genital mutilation has been illegal in Sweden since 1982. Since 1999 it is an offence even if the procedure is performed in a different country and carries a penalty of up to four years imprisonment.

Five teenage girls are admitted at Kyuso District Hospital in Kitui after they were forcefully circumcised by their parents. The five, aged between 13 and 18 years, were rescued by APs after they received information about the incident. Mumoni AP commander who ordered the operation to rescue the girls and arrest the perpetrators said two of the girls were found in their homes while three were found hidden in a bush where they had been taken for the circumcision.

He said four women were arrested among them a traditional circumciser and the parents of the girls. “When we got the report from the area chief, I immediately dispatched officers who arrested the four women and rescued the girls. Unfortunately the girls had already been cut and we rushed them to hospital because they had lost a lot of blood and were walking with difficulty,” said Mohamed. The women are held at Kyuso police station.

Female genital mutilation is illegal in the country. Mohamed said the practice is still rampant in the area inhabited by the Tharaka community but warned that stern action will be taken against parents found subjecting their children to the female cut.

A seven-year-old girl is screaming hysterically in a secluded room. She has just had her clitoris cut off, her vagina sewn together and the surrounding areas of her genitalia burnt with corrosives. Her legs have been tied together and for months she will not be able to walk. Furthermore she will have no choice but to urinate through her fleshy wounds. The physical pain and psychological trauma will haunt her until the day she dies, unless she bleeds to death first.

Although types of cutting may vary, this is the uncomfortable truth behind Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Practicing communities believe that FGM preserves virginity until marriage, enhances male sexual pleasure, is part of custom or tradition and finally (false) belief that it a religious requirement. According to the World Health Organization, Female Genital Mutilation is practiced in 28 African countries, Israel, Iraqi Kurdistan, Oman, Yemen, and now occurs within migrant communities in the United Kingdom and America. It is estimated that as many as 100-150 million women around the world have been subjected to FGM.
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At a young age, the girls are schooled into believing that they exist, purely for male gratification and that their bodies are just vessels to facilitate that pleasure. [ . . . ]
Denying them their basic human rights to bodily integrity is psychological manipulation. When those rights are taken away and handed over to men or the community, women can subsequently believe that they are insignificant members of society and become resigned to roles as second class citizens.

The article below was written by the President of the Egyptian Feminist Union. Will western feminists listen?

This summer, as the dust of the Arab Spring revolutions begins to settle, women – who stood shoulder to shoulder with men in defying tyranny – are finding themselves marginalised and excluded from decision-making.

Despite the new freedoms championed by the revolutionaries, women continue to be regarded as subordinate to men. In Tunisia, a mass protest called for all women to be veiled, which led to unveiled female religion professors being hounded off campuses. Mobs shouted at Tunisian women demonstrators to go back to the kitchen “where they belong.” In Egypt, too, conservative forces are on the rise, demanding policies – particularly reforms of family legislation – that would represent a step backward for women.

Angered and alarmed by these developments, Arab women have been forced to defend their rights. In April 2011, Tunisian women successfully pressed for an electoral-parity law, thanks to which they won 49 of 217 parliamentary seats in last October’s elections. In Egypt, though, the prospects for women seem gloomier, because they failed to retain the pre-revolution quota system that had given them 64 parliamentary seats.

The young men in bright yellow vests spot one: a middle-aged man inside the “women only” subway car of the metro. One holds the door open while another admonishes him. “You have to get off,” says the young man, grabbing the elder man’s hand and guiding him out.

On the platform, a shouting match erupts between the middle-aged man and the members of the new volunteer patrol cracking down on an epidemic of sexual harassment of women in public.

“I was with my family!” the middle-aged man cries out. “Now, how am I going to find them?”

Abdel Fattah Mahmoud, the team leader, tries to cool tempers. “You have to understand that men are simply not allowed in the women-only car,” he explains, easing him away from the other volunteers.

A sort of secular liberal morality police, the patrol coalesced through social media websites in response to blatant and apparently rising physical and verbal molestation of women in public spaces throughout Egypt that is discouraging their participation in civic life. Most harassment incidents take place between 7am and 2pm as women go to work or school, a 2010 study funded by the EU and the UN Population Fund concluded.

The patrol chimes with the self-starting spirit of last year’s revolution, which some fear may have encouraged the lawlessness contributing to a perceived rise in the already high incidence of sexual harassment cases.